For decades atherosclerosis has been investigated for its role in at least three diseases, heart disease (HD), peripheral arterial disease (PAD) and cerebrovascular disease (CD). The pathologic processes in these disease categories are similar, and atherosclerosis is now considered a systemic disease irrespective of which vascular bed is affected. Consequently, the social burden of atherosclerosis is enormous: in 2002 there were an estimated 71,100,000 persons in the US affected with heart disease, resulting in 947,428 deaths at a cost of US $393.5 billion dollars. There are 5,400,000 Americans living with the effects of stroke, costing an estimated $56.8 in healthcare in 2005. The global burden of atherosclerosis is expected to rise.
Atherosclerosis is a systemic disease. In many patients it is both insidious and affects more than one vascular bed. Early detection of atherosclerosis or identification of patients susceptible to developing atherosclerosis is crucial to preventing morbidity and mortality. There is, therefore, a need in the art to identify methods of identifying patients at risk for developing atherosclerosis as well as methods of treating patients already affected with an atherosclerosis-related disorder.